Barbara Watts, SI Epsom reports: ‘We had hoped that Mia Wallis, our Volunteering in Pretoria (VIP) volunteer, would arrive in Johannesburg in October, but because of unfortunate delays in obtaining a visa, she finally left on December 11th. She arrived tired, but excited and was met by Sally Currin, PP SISA and SI Pretoria Tshwane.
Mia spent Christmas and the New Year with club members and began work at Makgatho Primary School on January 11th. She is loving it! Contact is difficult because of the lack of wi-fi, but the following messages and pictures tell their own story.
Mia Wallis Monthly Report
My day starts at around 6.30am which is the time I usually wake up for work in the morning (this took some getting used to as I am not really a morning person). My morning routine is the same every day and this usually includes me getting ready for work and making my lunch for the day – this usually takes around 30-40 minutes. By now it will have just passed 7am, and I normally aim to leave at around this time. I then walk from Mercy’s house (my host mothers) to the main street where I catch a taxi to work; this usually takes around 15 minutes depending on how quickly I can catch a taxi.
When the school day starts and the learners have settled into their classes –Myself, Plindile, and Pauline (other volunteers) usually start the day by making sure the library is clean and ready for learners to come in and choose/read books. Once this is done the day is usually quite busy as there is always something that needs to be done. Daily tasks/work is very varied and ranges from barcoding books and scanning them into the library system ready for learners to start reading, sometimes we also offer to help some of the teachers with lesson prep just to make their lives a little easier/less busy J In our spare time we also offer to type draft reports into neater versions ready for the teachers to use them. Another big priority of the librarians (me, Plindile, and Pauline) is to make sure the learners from grades 4-7 receive the tablets in time for their allocated slots during the day. This includes making sure they have been charged in the charging station in the morning ready for the learners to use throughout the day. After they’ve been charged we must ensure they have been put in their protective cases ready for the learners to use. When the day is finished we collect back the tablets and make sure they are placed back into the charging station/store room ready for the next day.
Another priority of ours is ensuring the book boxes for each class have been correctly prepared each week. The learners are supposed to read 2 books in class every week so it is our job to ensure that there are enough books in the book boxes and with enough variety so the learners can continue to read new books when they go to change them in the middle of the week.
During the learners’ break and lunch time we are in charge of the reading project which encourages learners to read in their spare time, whether that be during their lunch/ breaks or at home – this is where the library system comes into play as this is how we monitor which learner has which book and for how long they have them for. We monitor this using the learners borrower cards and barcodes places within each book.
The last thing Pauline and I do is that we run an after-school club called Soul Buddyz and Buddyz of Tomorrow three times a week, in which we run a class of up to 15 learners and cover certain topics each session. Some topics include HIV/AIDS awareness, ways to lead a healthy lifestyle, ways to reduce carbon footprint, how to recycle, and awareness of certain diseases and how they can be prevented. We also have plans to start a project in which we will be starting up a library in the orphanage near Makgatho. We’ll be doing this within the next few weeks with the Soul Buddyz/ Buddyz of Tomorrow groups.
When all of this is finished, I then start my journey home. The walk isn’t very far – maybe about half an hour from the school, but sometimes if it’s too hot or raining I catch a taxi. I’m currently staying at my host mothers home named Mercy. We live in a household of 6 people – Mercy, myself, her son Bushy, her niece Dipuo, her grandson Atang and Pauline, another volunteer from Germany. I’m really enjoying my time at Mercy’s and I really like the fact that we have a busy household, as it means there is always something going on and always something I can be doing – meaning it’s difficult for me to get bored J In terms of Mercy and her family I’m really grateful to be staying somewhere with people who’re so nice and who’ve welcomed me so easily into their home. It is also nice to be experiencing South African culture in its truest and most purest form.
Mia X
February 2017